Ashley Eckstein uses her voice for many things, most notably in her portrayal of the first female Jedi in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She also talks a whole lot about the importance of girl power and sends plenty of shout-outs to female fans. And now, she’s speaking up about what inspires her.

In her book, It’s Your Universe, the actress shares her most valuable life lessons—and a few she’s learned from her favorite Disney characters along the way.

Read on for an excerpt from Eckstein’s book that highlights the origin story of Her Universe, an apparel company she started for fan girls:

It All Began with a Quest for a T-Shirt

I grew up loving Star Wars. As a young girl, I used to pretend to be R2-D2, who’s always been my favorite character, in my living room. When Star Tours, the Star Wars attraction, opened at Disney World in Hollywood Studios, we loved it—feeling like we were on the forest moon of Endor, riding speeder bikes and playing with Ewoks.

Now that I was the voice of Ahsoka Tano, my life was immersed in the Star Wars universe, and I was traveling the nation going to Star Wars events and conventions. As I found myself attending more and more events, I wanted to show off my Star Wars fandom with my attire. However, despite being a lifelong fan, I only had one Star Wars T-shirt in my closet, and it was really small. So I did what lots of girls would do in my situation: I went shopping! I went to the malls and scoured the Internet—and I ended up empty-handed. I had to shop in the men’s and boys’ section. I knew this wasn’t right, because there were women and girls everywhere at all the Star Wars events I went to! I clearly wasn’t alone.

I started to do some research to back up my assumptions, and I gathered information on the attendance of the top five sci-fi and fantasy conventions around the world. I found that, on average, 45 percent of the attendees were women and girls. I also found out that 85 percent of consumer purchases at the time were being made by women. I wasn’t a mathematician, but these numbers were not adding up. Why wasn’t there more Star Wars merchandise for us girls?

As I kept doing my research online, I uncovered an even bigger problem than the lack of merchandise geared toward female Star Wars fans: fangirls were being bullied terribly for expressing their love of Star Wars.

You see, society had stereotyped that sci-fi and fantasy were for boys, not girls, and therefore almost all the merchandise was made for guys. I read story after story on social media and heard from many of my female fans that when they wore something Star Wars, they were made fun of for liking “boy” things. I also talked to many girls who said their parents or friends called them “weird” for liking Star Wars, and to adult women who were told to “grow up” and move on from their fandom. This was when online chat rooms and message boards were very popular, and women and girls were often ignored if they tried to join in on a conversation about Star Wars. Sometimes women would pretend to be men in chat rooms just so they could have a conversation about Star Wars and be taken seriously.

I was shocked. This was no way to live our lives, and the bullying had to stop! I couldn’t believe my findings and thought that someone had to do something about this. Then I thought, What would Ahsoka do? She would definitely take action. There was my answer. And since I had my foot in the door at Lucasfilm, I decided to make a call….

My first step in inquiring about making merchandise for female Star Wars fans was to reach out to my contacts at Lucasfilm. I asked if they could put me in touch with the people who made the merchandise for Star Wars. I wanted to ask them why they were not making merchandise for women, and as one of their actresses, I wanted to offer to help design and promote apparel for female fans. I had never made merchandise or designed professionally before, but since I wanted this merchandise for myself, I had a lot of ideas!

The licensing team, which oversees all Star Wars merchandise, agreed to meet with me, but the meeting was canceled before it even happened. I worked to get the meeting rescheduled. Then, right before the meeting was supposed to happen the second time, they canceled again. This time they told me no to the meeting and no to my idea, because they only gave out licenses to reputable companies that could produce the merchandise for them. After I persisted and requested a meeting for a third time, they had a Lucasfilm representative call me and tell me to give up on my idea. They said I should just settle for a men’s size small, because women would not buy merchandise made for them.

I agreed to back off from the way I was going about it, but I did not agree to give up on my idea. I knew that there was a need. I knew that something had to change, and I was more determined than ever to make it happen!

AMG/Parade Digital

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